After his wildly popular show moved to ESPN in the fall, Pat McAfee has accused an ESPN executive of “attempting to sabotage” the show, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
- During Friday’s installment of The Pat McAfee Show, McAfee called out Norby Williamson, the show’s executive editor and head of event and studio production, saying he leaked negative ratings information.
- While it is unclear to what exactly McAfee is referring, The New York Post published a story about the show’s ratings Thursday.
- Here is what McAfee said during his show:
- “More people are watching the show than ever before. We’re very thankful for the ESPN folks being very hospitable. Now there are some people actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN. More specifically, I believe Norby Williamson is the guy who is attempting to sabotage our program. I’m not 100 percent sure, he’s just seemingly the only human that has information, and then somehow that information gets leaked, and it’s wrong, and then it sets a narrative of what our show is. Somebody tried to get ahead of our actual ratings release with wrong numbers 12 hours beforehand. That’s a sabotage attempt. And it’s been happening basically, this entire season from some people who didn’t necessarily love the old edition of the Pat McAfee Show to the ESPN family.”
- McAfee went on to explain that he has had a troubled relationship with Williamson for some time:
- “That guy left me in his office for 45 minutes, no-showed me in 2018. So this guy has had zero respect for me, and in return, same thing back to him for a long time. So even with that taking place… we’re still growing somehow. Yep. So we’re very thankful. Yeah. I think we’re doing it right. We’re trying to do it as right as possible.”
- ESPN released ratings for The Pat McAfee Show today, saying the show had “298 million total views” in December, and that it averaged 886,000 viewers across ESPN platforms, YouTube, and TikTok
- ESPN has not commented on the situation.